The class seemed quiet until Benett and his friends started shrieking “Gay power!” and other chants I couldn’t make out. I went on with the punctuation lesson except for a comment about Tourette’s syndrome victims; Robbie caught my eye and smiled. Later, I told him I’d see him in the play he’s acting in.

I was asking students to give me an adjective, and after two girls said “little” and “short,” I laughed and said, “You’re looking at me.” I heard Benett say, “Then they would have said faggot.” “That’s a noun,” I told him. “And here’s another noun for you: asshole.” He and a couple of his friends walked out of class.

New York is really two cities. There’s the city of people who are educated, sophisticated, often young and single. They live in luxury (though they are always complaining). Side by side with them there’s a second city made up of the poor, the elderly, most blacks and Hispanics, and the middle class who haven’t fled to the Sun Belt.

There’s a way to avoid the subject entirely and just not put your foot in your mouth. What you don’t do is give people a reason to look at you funny and question why you feel someone is not allowed to do the same things you do.

The Moral Majority types seem to be taking control of America; they want to make it a Christian country and end pluralism and secularism. I don’t know if the 1980s will bring about repression and start us on the road to fascism, but I’m going to fight it with everything I’ve got.